Energy Department's work isn't in vain

The canisters will leak. That's pretty much all Nevadans know and all they need to know about the "sound science" behind plans to store the nation's radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain.

In frank comments to a Sierra Club forum in Reno last week, scientist Paul Craig laid on the line the points Yucca Mountain foes have been pounding for years. In trying to contain nuclear waste that will be hazardous for thousands of years - perhaps 300,000 years, an almost-unimaginable span - the U.S. Department of Energy's design is seriously flawed.

Craig, a former member of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board from the University of California-Davis, said data indicate the canisters which are to hold the waste have a "good possibility of localized corrosion" in the first 2,000 to 3,000 years. His assessment was backed up by the executive director of the board, which has reported the evidence to the Energy Department.

What does it mean? It means there's no point in spending billions of dollars to ship nuclear waste from around the country and store it inside a mountain in the Nevada desert.

The basic concept was questionable from the start, but it should have become moot when the Energy Department's analysis of Yucca Mountain showed that it could not contain the waste geologically. As the design shifted toward canisters, it became clear that the canisters could be stored just about anywhere - in fact, there are many locations better suited than remote Yucca Mountain.

The solution is staring the Energy Department in the face. With canisters capable of containing it for thousands of years, waste should be stored near the facilities which produce it - not shipped around the country - until a reasonable and economical means is found for reprocessing or neutralizing it.

In other words, the Energy Department's work hasn't gone for naught. It has bought itself at least a few hundred years for a "sound science" solution to catch up to the problem.